In an interview with Lisa Carnwell, Editor for PBC Today, David Jellings, Solibri UK Managing Director and board member of buildingSMART UK and Ireland, discusses the pressing need for an open communication standard…
buildingSMART has reshaped itself into a business-led organisation and met in June this year for a major meeting in Paris. The buildingSMART International Council Meeting & Chapter Conference 2015 bought all the chapters together to develop the next steps.
The common theme for buildingSMART is open standards, which came across very clearly at the meeting. The agenda centred on using the combined skills of chapter representatives, via a series of workshops, to shape the future of buildingSMART activities and standards. They needed to understand how to harness the skills and develop a united message – the need for open standards.
Together with the new appointment of Richard Kelly, Operations Director, this open and inclusive approach clearly shows that buildingSMART is evolving into a more professional and pro-active organisation, better equipped to drive the global open BIM agenda.
The Council meeting was planned to allow a balance of communication from buildingSMART International Management and full engagement from members. This collaboration is essential to facilitate development of the business model.
At the meeting Richard Petrie, CEO of buildingSMART presented a report highlighting that BIM presents a unique opportunity across the full built asset value chain. The continued growth is being driven by the realisation that the BIM process improves predictability, increases asset value in addition to reducing costs, delivery time and carbon.
For Petrie, the challenge is for buildingSMART ‘to become the credible go-to international standards body’ by expanding its operations and strengthening relations with governments and the wider industry.
The goal is to enable full benefits from digital ways of working in the built asset industry, meaning to succeed, they must have:
- Standards Body of Reference;
- Vibrant Chapters;
- Quality Mark in demand.
Mark Bew, Chairman HM Government BIM Task Group, gave a presentation: ‘Building Information Modelling – Level 2 by 2016; Just the beginning?’ Bew outlined that UK construction contributes nearly £90bn to the economy, with BIM in the UK government being led by the Highways Agency, Ministry of Justice and Environment Agency, (who are close to 100% adoption of Level 2). He said that almost £10bn worth of projects had been delivered, or were in progress by the end of 2014. All UK government departments reported significant cost reductions (in the region of 10-20%), as a result of BIM implementation.
Moving forward, early definitions of what Level 3 may look like were presented – with the key message that buildingSMART standards will be an essential part of the solution.
Certification of approved systems
I asked Jellings how successful the certification of approved systems have been to prove compliance with open standards. For him, open standards are fundamental to successful BIM, and buildingSMART look at a lot of standards! He mentioned that in construction, there is a two-fold problem.
- A misunderstanding of what we mean by an open communication standard;
- The resistance to change.
buildingSMART’s major driver is how to work toward a common communication standard. This is the backbone for BIM and how it will be successful. Why? For Jellings it’s perhaps easier to understand if you consider the development of the mobile phone.
He said:
“Remember the old mobile phones? They were very heavy, with a battery pack that lasted for two minutes. Making a short call to the same network was easy, but to talk on a different network was far too expensive, and this was because everyone had their own communication protocol. In the 90’s it was eventually agreed that a common communications protocol was needed to fix the problem. Within a short time frame the solution was there. Billions of dollars were poured into the development of mobile phones and they became the preferred way to communicate. That’s just one example of where an open communications standard provided a total solution.
“When we look at software within the construction industry we have to find a way of creating interoperability between multiple products – it needs an open standard.”
The IFC schema is simply a way of presenting the data we need to build and operate built assets in a common computer readable format. It’s free from the point of use and ubiquitous (IFC data is compatable with past versions). Jellings believes the industry has to understand that:
“The IFC is something that is absolutely required and we will not be able to do BIM successfully unless we have a communication protocol. It will be free but it also has to be complied with by software vendors.
“This was something of a challenge at first – ensuring the software vendors understood the need for compliance – but that has somewhat dissipated now they have realised the importance. After all, the industry wants it and the UK government have recognised that the core and centre of Level 3 BIM will be an open communication protocol (or IFC). The emphasis for buildingSMART is to develop the IFC going forward.” Jellings says.
“It’s good but not perfect. To develop it we need to concentrate on an IFC for infrastructure. There are projects underway to do this and we are working with some of the biggest construction projects globally, as well as in the UK to do this. The likes of HS2 and the Thames Tideway Tunnel have a vested interest in making IFC for infrastructure a success.”
A second level of emphasis for buildingSMART is for software vendors to ensure their products can comply with the IFC, and that requires a rigorous and robust certification process.
COBie
COBie was originally developed by Bill East of the US Army Corp of Engineers to develop and record asset data for their establishments throughout the world. Firstly and most importantly, COBie was developed as a sub-set of IFC. COBie has a hierarchical structure which goes into building, spaces types, objects, components, property sets etc. and that structure is exactly the same as the IFC structure. Basically, if you’re not producing COBie from IFC files you’re making more work for yourself.
Jellings noted that:
“The construction industry is very traditional, but BIM is a major transformation which means they have to rethink and reassess their processes. COBie and IFC are just elements of BIM, with COBie being a way of presenting asset data (which is a specified requirement). It’s been great for BIM as the UK government have said they want COBie.
Where are we now?
As the 2016 deadline gets ever closer, one of the most common BIM question rears its head. Are we there yet? Jellings replied:
“Ask 5 different people this question and you’ll get 5 different answers but I believe that the adoption of BIM is not as great as most of the industry surveys show. However, statistics depend on how you interpret the results. If we look at the actual number of companies in the UK – of which there are tens of thousands – and ask what is the percentage of those that have adopted BIM, I believe the answer is very low. The many thousands of companies in the UK are micro businesses doing small works – extensions etc. These people will never use BIM, or need to use it,” he says.
“However, if you look at the volume aspect of the businesses, or, if you take the top twenty or so of contractors, they are all trying to seriously develop BIM programmes. This top twenty of businesses probably account for around 30-40% of the UK construction business. In terms of cash, then you could say that BIM adoption is now above 30% in the UK. For me, it all depends on how you ask the question. From my experience, the bigger contractors, the bigger design houses and the engineering groups are all doing BIM, be it at it different levels or different degrees (with some better than others), but all making a concerted and serious attempt to do it.
“Our major issue now, is spreading BIM down the supply chain. A large company with available staff and cash will be able to it, but if you’re a fifty man construction company it’s more difficult. This integration of the supply chain is the big challenge. Once we can crack that then the physical numbers of people doing BIM will start to increase,” says Jellings.
In terms of ever reaching Level 3 BIM, the most important point to make is to get Level 2 ready first. Mark Bew has put a team together to start to define what Level 3 may look like, but the success of that depends on Level 2 as the bedrock. We can start to define what Level 3 looks like but until Level 2 is up and running out to the majority of the industry, it will be difficult if not impossible to implement.
BIM is simple!
Jellings is an enthusiastic and passionate BIM advocate who has been experiencing the BIM idea since the 1980’s. His background was in manufacturing and during that time, he went through what was termed, the ‘Integrated Process’. He explained:
“That’s what BIM is – an integrated business process. It’s important not to get hung up on the complexities of BIM. BIM is simply a way of allowing people to have access to the information they need when they need it. If you think about that, everything else starts to fall into place.
“The most important aspect we have to understand is that for BIM to work, we have to trust people and share information – and that is the biggest barrier in construction. As an industry, we have rarely in the past worked on that principle, so we have to do the opposite and realise it’s only a way of sharing information. Once you get your head around it it’s simple. You can’t do BIM by yourself and you can’t do BIM unless you change the way you think.”
Lisa Carnwell
Editor
lcarnwell@adjacentgovernment.co.uk
www.planningandbuildingcontroltoday.co.uk